If you apply to large corps or even medium corps, it will likely never be read by a human if you put graphics on it. The online apps get filtered through this god awful filtering software that is supposed to pick out keywords and rank the resumes, since apparently worthless HR people's time is valuable to worthless managers. So if you have fancy formatting or graphics the filtering can't handle it and drops your resume.

What I would do is make a simple text only resume for submitting online apps, and when you get an interview bring the nice resume and hand them that at the interview.

It's a good format if you have a lot of jobs in your work history, as people in the entertainment industry tend to do. I have a lot of 2-year tenures in my past, so presenting my experience this way sort of hides the bouncing around. It's also good because I have so many positions in my history that my ressie goes to almost two full pages. That's generally a no-no, so you have to organize the information a little differently.

Also, a good tip I got a few years ago was to put your name as a header in the upper right hand corner of the page. When the HR professional is flipping through the stack of CVs, they'l likely be thumbing that corner of each page in sequence. That way they're more likely to see your name. Every little thing helps.

And don't use any serif fonts (like Times New Roman) on resumes submitted electronically because they can sometimes get screwy when converting to a PDF. They're fine for printed docs, but if you're emailing a document go with a no-serif font.

tifosi77 wrote:And don't use any serif fonts (like Times New Roman) on resumes submitted electronically because they can sometimes get screwy when converting to a PDF. They're fine for printed docs, but if you're emailing a document go with a no-serif font.

I’m not a hiring person, but I would immediately throw out any résumé that’s written entirely in a san-serif typeface. San-serif fonts are acceptable in limited roles like contrasting headings, but I would never set my entire résumé in one. I would also be tempted to toss any résumé written in Times New Roman, because it demonstrates laziness and a lack of attention to detail. There are much better typefaces available. Also, nothing on a résumé should be underlined. Ever. Underlining is a remnant of the typewriter days and has no place in modern typography. For headings, it would be better to use something like small caps, a change in point size, or a complimentary san-serif font.

Helvetica is a good, albeit somewhat boring, typeface. Like all san-serif typefaces, it has many applications. But I wouldn’t use one for a résumé or any other document that should carry an air of elegance or competence. You want something that looks good at first glance. I’ll paraphrase Matthew Butterick’s two laws of typography from Typography for Lawyers:

1. When facing multiple documents, if a reader finds it difficult to make distinctions based on substance, he or she will likely switch to making distinctions based on appearance.

2. Because judgments based on substance require more reader attention, a reader with less time to spend on a document is more likely to make a judgment on appearance.

Thus, for example, if a busy HR person is flipping through a stack of résumés, she is more likely to respond favorably to the ones that are typographically pleasing. And when it comes down to deciding which ones to put in the give-them-a-call pile, there is a significant possibility that—whether consciously or not—she may resort to appearance as a tiebreaker.

As an aside, while Typography for Lawyers is indeed focused on lawyers as the target market, the vast majority of its content would be equally applicable to other professions and to anyone who has to typographically set their own documents.

Serifs are the little extensions at the end of the strokes that make up letters. In the image, among others, the little “feet” at the bottom of the capital A, the angled extension at the top of the lower-case B, and the arrow-like point on the upper part of the capital C are serifs. Serifs are designed to evoke the impression that the typeface was created by the strokes of a calligrapher’s pen, although the adherence to reality can vary. Early (humanist) typefaces usually looked very much like calligraphy, but over the years the adherence became blurred.

If anyone is interested in this subject, The Elements of Typographic Style by Robert Bringhurst has a nice discussion of the history of type design. (Oh snap! There’s a new edition of that book. Must buy.)

What's the opinion of mission statements/objectives? I've had somewhat contradictory advice on this over the years. Some say to include one that sufficiently broad and forward looking so you appear as someone who's in it for the long-haul. And I've also been told that the mission statement/objective should be specific to the position you're applying to. I generally tweak the content of my resume depending on the posted job description rather than the objective.

That said, I haven't sent a resume out in nearly four years. So I'm a bit rusty.

Shyster wrote:I’m not a hiring person, but I would immediately throw out any résumé that’s written entirely in a san-serif typeface. San-serif fonts are acceptable in limited roles like contrasting headings, but I would never set my entire résumé in one.

I've gotten that advice from multiple sources in the HR world. Serif fonts make scannability an issue because of the actual serifs themselves and serif fonts are more likely to have characters touching, which makes OCR go a bit bonkers.

And avoid using hollow bullet points, as most OCR will read that as an O, o or a 0. It was also an issue as recently as five or six years ago that italics would make scanning go all wonky, too. But that's largely a non-issue today.

Another tip from the book "Positioning": never include your middle name or initial in your CV. It implies that you are so underwhelmed by your own background that there's no possible way you could distinguish yourself from all the other people with your name without including that middle initial. Not sure how valid that one is, but there you go.

Tastes certainly vary, and it might depend on the industry in question too (that is, a hip computer startup may be looking for something different than a corporate or legal job), but I would be very tempted to go with a conservative humanist font like:

tifosi77 wrote:Another tip from the book "Positioning": never include your middle name or initial in your CV. It implies that you are so underwhelmed by your own background that there's no possible way you could distinguish yourself from all the other people with your name without including that middle initial. Not sure how valid that one is, but there you go.

I actually have two middle initials, and for personal reasons I always sign my name using both of them (as in John A.B. Doe).

Shyster wrote:Note that none of these typefaces are free or included as default typefaces in Microsoft or Apple’s software.

Which means when someone tries to open them up and they don't have that font, it will revert to system default. (I believe on a Windows machine that would be Calibri.) Not only will this have the opposite of the desired effect (you will come off as so disinterested that you couldn't even be bothered to change the font), it can also completely wreck the formatting of the document. That means you are giving up control of what people see when you send them your ressie, which is why I think it's best to stick to "O-negative" fonts that can be opened on the most machines.

Sure, you can embed the font in the document. But depending on the font pack you could red-flag yourself with a file that's pushing 1 mb or more, and an embedded macro. Your submission is blocked by IT filters before it even makes to the job-bot stage.

Of course, all of this can be avoided simply by sending a pdf. But for some reason, employers still insist on getting editable documents. Is this to ensure better keyword searchability?

tifosi77 wrote:Of course, all of this can be avoided simply by sending a pdf. But for some reason, employers still insist on getting editable documents. Is this to ensure better keyword searchability?

I don’t know. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a law firm ask for résumés in an editable format. If you must send files in that format, it definitely limits you to using system fonts like Times Roman, as you are correct that the word processor will engage in (no-doubt) hideous substitutions. That’s also the same reason that I stick to system fonts for documents that will be shared or edited by multiple people, like for example contracts that are sent back and forth between counsel.

Also, some typefaces like Microsoft’s Cleartype collection (which includes Cambria, Calibri, Candara, Constantia, Corbel, and Consolas) have been specifically designed to look great when displayed on a computer screen, so it may make sense to use them for documents that will only be electronic. The downside is that the features that make those typefaces look good on screen often make them look bad on paper. For example, take a fairly dense, lengthy document, switch the typeface to Cambria (which does look decently good on the screen), and print it out. I bet most people wouldn’t like it at all on paper.